Snuggie Rode Silly Ads to Stardom Over Rivals

The Snuggie ad was meant to be funny, said Scott Boilen, whose company makes the product.

ONE of the most memorable, and parodied, of current infomercials is for the Snuggie, a blanket with sleeves whose users resemble converts to a cozy cult. Jay Leno mocked the Snuggie in a monologue (“Why don’t you just put your robe on backwards?”), as did Ellen DeGeneres on her syndicated show (“They should throw in a pointed hat so you can look like a wizard.”)

On CNN recently, a segment on the Snuggie — four million of which have sold since it began advertising in October — said it “has spawned all sorts of online imitators” and later mentioned the Slanket as one “of the other versions of the Snuggie out there.”

But it turns out that the Snuggie is actually the imitator.

The Slanket, another blanket with sleeves, predates the Snuggie by more than two years.

Gary Clegg said it began in 1998, when he was a freshman at the University of Maine in Orono and living in a chilly dormitory. He cut a hole in his sleeping bag because his TV remote wouldn’t work through the fabric, and subsequently asked his mother to sew a sleeve onto it, he said. Mr. Clegg added a second sleeve and otherwise refined the design in the ensuing years. He gave the appendaged blankets as gifts to friends, and finally, with an investment from his brother, Jeff, mass-produced them and started selling them on Slanket.com in early 2006.

In 2007, the Slanket was picked up both by the QVC network, where Mr. Clegg appears regularly to pitch it, and by Skymall, the catalog tucked into airplane seat pockets. In 2008, Slanket revenue topped $4 million.

A snowboarder who has competed professionally, Mr. Clegg, 29, grows a scruffy beard between QVC appearances and has a laid-back, surfer-dude attitude, reflected in the Slanket’s motto: “Spread the Warmth.” But the Snuggie leaves him cold; he calls it a “cheap knockoff” that “undermines the integrity” of his Slanket.

With similar products bound to appear soon and a lesser-known sleeved blanket — the Freedom Blanket — predating Mr. Clegg’s, this throwdown of the throws suggests that it is not always the first one to market who wins but the one with the most aggressive marketing plan.

Although some media outlets and bloggers mistakenly describe the Snuggie as the trailblazer, Scott Boilen, 42, president and chief executive of the Allstar Marketing Group, which makes the Snuggie, makes no such claims.

“We had seen products like these in catalogs for a while — even before the Slanket came out, I think,” said Mr. Boilen, whose company also markets infomercial products like Debbie Meyer GreenBags, Aqua Globes plant waterers and Topsy Turvy tomato planters. “And we thought if we could put a clever commercial behind it and offer it at a better value price, then people would buy it.”

Competition, he said, is a marketplace inevitability.

“We would all be in not-great shape if there was still just one car company,” Mr. Boilen said.

In October, the company started showing the two-minute infomercial, where Snuggie wearers read, knit and eat popcorn, while a Snuggies-ensconced family cheers in the stands at a football game. Allstar bought more than $10 million in television spots, which offer the Snuggie for $19.95. (The Slanket — larger and made from considerably thicker fleece — costs $44.95.)The ad, by Blue Moon Studios, is intentionally over the top, Mr. Boilen said.

“We were definitely in on the joke,” he said. “Do we expect a family to wear these to a football game? No.”

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The Slanket appeared earlier than the Snuggie but has been helped by the rivals campaign, said Gary Clegg of Slanket.com.

Hundreds of videos on YouTube parody the ad, with the most popular garnering more than a million views.

“Certain products transcend advertising and become an indelible part of popular culture,” Mr. Boilen said.

The general rule for direct-response campaigns is that companies lose money while the product is offered exclusively through infomercials but turn a profit after it appears — As Seen on TV! — in stores, but Mr. Boilen said the Snuggie was profitable before it hit shelves. Walgreens and Bed, Bath & Beyond now carry it (retail price: $14.99), and Mr. Boilen said he expected that “every major retailer” would stock it by the fall.

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At Slanket, Mr. Clegg said he also had retailers lined up but declined to name them.

Mr. Clegg said he would not pursue legal action against Snuggie because when he approached patent lawyers while developing the Slanket, he was told a design patent for it would not be feasible.

Clifford A. Ulrich, a New York patent lawyer with the intellectual property firm Kenyon & Kenyon, whose knowledge of the products before he was reached for comment was limited to seeing the Snuggie commercial, said securing patents for such items would be “an uphill battle.”

Mr. Leno’s quip about the products looking like bathrobes worn backward, Mr. Ulrich said, actually resonates legally: because there are many products that are shapeless garments with sleeves, like hospital gowns or religious vestments, and because the sleeved blankets are neither made from innovative materials nor have complicated moving parts, there is little that is proprietary about them from a design standpoint.

Besides, Snuggie apparently has been good for Mr. Clegg, who projects that Slanket’s revenue of $4.2 million in 2008 will increase to as much as $9 million in 2009.

“Their infomercial is raising general awareness about the product,” said Mr. Clegg, adding that some consumers end up cozying up to his costlier, higher-quality offering. “There’s Cadillac, and there’s Hyundai,” he said.

Meanwhile, Sean Iannuzzi, 34, finds it ironic that Mr. Clegg is taking umbrage with the Snuggie because he was similarly miffed when the Slanket, in his opinion, stole his idea. In April 2005, eight months before Slanket.com went live, Mr. Iannuzzi and his wife started selling their fleece-sleeved Freedom Blanket on freedomblanket.com, where it is currently available for $24.99.

Ms. Iannuzzi makes the blankets herself in their home in Palmyra, N.J., and the couple have sold almost 13,000, even though they never advertised or sold them through online or bricks-and-mortar merchants. Because of that low profile, Mr. Clegg maintains that he learned about the Freedom Blanket only after he had begun manufacturing the Slanket — but before his Web site went live — and he still thinks of the product’s origin as being in his chilly dorm room.

“I would never go around saying that I came up with something if it wasn’t true,” Mr. Clegg said. “I would have no right to be annoyed with the Snuggie people if that was the case.”

It all leaves Mr. Iannuzzi, who buys his fleece in bulk, feeling fleeced himself. He was watching TV with his young daughter when she first saw the Snuggie commercial.

“My daughter sees it and says, ‘That’s the blanket that mommy makes,’ ” Mr. Iannuzzi said. “As a father, I have to explain to my kid that that’s how America works.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B6 of the New York edition with the headline: Snuggie Rode Silly Ads To Stardom Over Rivals. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe